Barnes allowed that LEAD was better than “no diversion at all,” while Councilmember Rivera said the city has already “thrown a lot” of money at the program.

By Erica C. Barnett

Police Chief Shon Barnes questioned the value of LEAD, the city’s main criminal justice diversion program, at a city council committee on Monday—saying the program could not, on its own, “deliver the level of order, safety and visible presence that residents, businesses and visitors believe should be indicative of a major US city.” For 15 years, LEAD has provided services as an alternative to arrest and incarceration; the model, which includes long-term case management, harm reduction, and connections to housing and treatment, has been replicated around the country and is considered a best practice for minimizing people’s involvement in the criminal legal system.

Since 2023, police have had the power to arrest and charge people with a gross misdemeanor for possessing or drugs or using them in public. That year, a new state law made drug use or possession a gross misdemeanor, rather than a felony, in response to a 2021 state supreme court decision called State v. Blake that overturned existing laws that classified possession and public use as felony crimes.

Between 2024 and 2025, according to a staff presentation during the council’s public safety committee on Tuesday,  LEAD diversions for people arrested for possession or public use declined almost 37 percent—from 173 to 109—while charges filed by police officers more than doubled and attempted jail bookings increased by 191 percent. (This number includes both jail bookings and people the jail declined to book because of medical and other issues). Misdemeanor drug use and possession cases made up just under half of all drug arrests.

This is not the outcome local leaders said they hoped for when they adopted the law in 2023. In an executive order that accompanied the new law, then-mayor Bruce Harrell directed SPD to adopt a policy that directed officers to divert drug users into LEAD or other programs whenever possible, rather than arresting them. That policy says, “When an arrest is warranted, sworn employees should prioritize diversion in lieu of booking.”

In general, the numbers show, police have continued to routinely arrest and book people using drugs in public rather than sending them to LEAD.

Both the new law and the executive order gave individual police officers the ultimate authority to decide whether to arrest someone or refer them to LEAD, based partly on whether they decide a person is posing a “threat of harm” to anyone in the public. (LEAD can also take referrals after an arrest).

The way SPD’s policy defines a threat of harm gives police a lot of discretion to decide whether they think someone is causing harm. But it specifies that any time a person is using drugs near a bus or rail stop, school, or park, a threat of “harm will be presumed.”

Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes said the list was almost too expansive. “A very important policy decision will have to be made whether or not officers can [arrest] people using drugs” when they witness it, “and whether or not we can make that arrest without having to go through the checklist,” Barnes said.

Barnes and acting Assistant Chief Rob Brown told the committee that they respected LEAD and planned to continue diverting people to the program. In “many cases,” Barnes said, LEAD “is better than having what we’ve always done, which is no intervention at all. But it’s also important to be clear-eyed about what the program can and cannot accomplish and whether it’s meeting the expectations of the people who live, work and visit the city.”

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LEAD was started in Belltown in 2011 and has expanded in size and scope many times since, so it’s inaccurate to say that the city has “always” done “no intervention at all.” Barnes, previously police chief in Madison, Wisconsin, was appointed chief by Harrell last year.

Brown, who was previously the commander of SPD’s South Precinct, said he was particularly interested in holding people accountable who engage in what he called “defiant” drug use—that is, drug use in highly visible places that make residents and customers “very uncomfortable.” These “defiant” users, Brown said, “feel like they’re entitled to consume. … I understand that [for] somebody who is an addict, that jail alone, by itself, is not necessarily going to help them get to moving beyond their addiction. But what I do want to see is behavior change for this type of defiant, open consumption.”

In a separate presentation, Purpose Dignity Action’s Lisa Daugaard, who launched LEAD in Belltown 15 years ago, said funding for the PDA-run program hit “a high-water mark” in 2022 and has been declining ever since, reducing LEAD’s capacity to take on new clients.

After a LEAD staffer described an analysis that showed people do better the longer people they stick with LEAD, Councilmember Maritza Rivera said she wasn’t convinced the program was doing enough to impact visible drug use and disorder. “I appreciate that it can take up to two years to get someone to accept services and get toward a path of recovery,” Rivera said, but businesses can’t wait that long to see improvements. “It taking two years to help someone get off of 12th and Jackson is not helping that small business be able to stay in business and stay open,” she said.

“I don’t mean any disrespect by this,” Rivera continued, “but everyone comes here and says, if we had more money, it would be different. … “You know, we have thrown a lot [of money at LEAD]—I mean, PDA gets $20 million from the city.”

“We’re in a budget deficit. So are there other things that we can do to address the problem? … Because I don’t know that we have more money that we can put into it.”

Last year, Rivera voted along with the rest of the council to increase the police department’s budget by $35 million, including millions for to expand SPD’s camera surveillance program into additional neighborhoods. That amount will grow this year even in he absence of new programs, as officers that received raises of 42 percent over the past five years get raises on top of their new higher salaries.